Teen witness recounts attacks on the homeless

January 10, 2008|By Tonya Alanez Staff Writer

When two teens went to ditch the baseball bats they had used to beat a sleeping homeless man in a Fort Lauderdale park, they found the victim sitting upright. So they beat him some more, the state's star witness to the crime claims.

"They went back down there and the guy was awake, supposedly," said Joseph "Joey" Griffith, 18, in a deposition obtained by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "And then they whacked him a couple of times."

Griffith recounted the Jan. 12, 2006, deadly predawn spree of attacks for prosecutors and defense attorneys. He accompanied a trio of friends suspected of targeting homeless men on Fort Lauderdale's streets two years ago.

William "Billy" Ammons and Brian Hooks, now 20, and Thomas Daugherty, now 19, have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Gaynor's slaying and attempted murder in the attacks on Pierre and Perez. Griffith, 16 at the time, who went home after the fatal beating, has not been criminally charged.

"There is a lack of any evidence that suggests that he was anything more than a bystander," prosecutor Brian Cavanagh said. He declined to comment on the deposition.

Security-camera footage showed Pierre's beating.

If convicted, Griffith's friends face life imprisonment.

Griffith now faces legal troubles of his own. On Dec. 19, he was arrested in Pembroke Pines for cocaine possession.

Griffith's remarks are the first to identify Hooks as an active participant in Gaynor's assault. He had previously been said to egg Daugherty on while he delivered the fatal blows.

According to Griffith's Dec. 7 deposition, the episode began when the four teens met up at Ammons' southwest Fort Lauderdale home. There, Hooks, who was "messed up" on Xanax bars, and Daugherty drank vodka. The group smoked pot. Then they headed out for a drive.

While Ammons parked his Chevrolet Blazer, Griffith claims, Daugherty and Hooks "shoved the bats in between their pants and their shirts ... " Then, Griffith said, one of them announced, "We're going to bang them up."

When Daugherty swung on Pierre and dropped the bat, Hooks ran in to land a blow, said Griffith, who fled to Ammons' Blazer where he rolled a marijuana joint. "I was shocked," he said.

Tonya Alanez can be reached at tealanez@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4542.